Central office for Jews

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Fontanepromenade  15

The Central Office for Jews (also Central Office for Jews at the Berlin Labor Office ) was a separate area of ​​the Berlin Labor Office during the Nazi era , with the help of which the National Socialist regime also instrumentalized the labor office for the persecution of Jews by forcibly using them for closed labor deployment. The office was located in the  15 Fontanepromenade building .

background

Since predominantly young people and working adults emigrated or were accepted by the immigration countries, the number of women and older people was very high among the Jewish population. At the end of 1938, 25,851 Berlin Jews were dependent on welfare support and in December 1938 5,199 unemployed people of Jewish origin were registered in Berlin.

In Berlin, Jewish welfare recipients had been regularly asked to do compulsory work since 1935. Since the summer of 1938, various local and Reich authorities had been discussing the exclusion of unemployed Jews from public welfare benefits or at least demanding forced labor from them . On November 19, 1938, Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick ordered that Jews should be referred to the help of Jewish welfare organizations and that public welfare should only intervene if it could not help. At this point in time, Jewish labor columns had already been formed in Vienna and assigned to do public work. In many companies it was difficult to achieve the required separation of Jewish workers from other employees.

Since the planned “compulsory transfer of the duty of care” to the detriment of a separate Jewish welfare system did not succeed sufficiently because of their low financial resources, the requirements were tightened at the end of 1938: Jews over sixty, or their spouse if they were unsuitable, should now be used for compulsory labor. Anyone who applied for welfare support as a Jew should be included in one of three separate compulsory work programs (Krumme Lanke, Wandalenallee and Gasanstaltsgelände Schmargendorf).

In March 1938 , the Gestapo had already ordered the labor office in Halle to also use Jews who were not registered as unemployed in closed groups to work in earthworks. This advance, however, remained an isolated case that was not approved by higher authorities. The extended labor deployment that followed from the end of 1938 served both “the harassment and the mobilization of all manpower reserves for war preparation”. Special permits did not have to be applied for at the employment office, but only at the Gestapo. It is not known how many Jews were drafted into labor before the war began. Forced labor was not officially introduced for all Jews until the end of 1940.

Office in the Fontanepromenade

On December 17, 1938, the Berlin employment office forbade Jews from entering their offices with immediate effect; a separate "Central Office for Jews" had been set up for them since December 1st. It was headed by Alfred Eschhaus from 1939 to 1942 and placed unemployed Jews in unqualified and poorly paid jobs. Following the Berlin model, the administration also set up separate offices for Jews in other large cities, shortly afterwards in Vienna and later in Wroclaw and Hamburg.

From 1940 the office obliged all Jews in its sphere of influence to perform forced labor and compelled the Jewish Community of Berlin to help with the registration. Allegedly, on its own initiative, the central office ordered the entire city area to label Jewish forced laborers with a yellow Star of David badge on their chest and back. Paul Eppstein complained about this to Walter Jagusch of the Gestapo on May 30, 1940 and asked for remedial action. Jagusch promised to get in touch with the employment office first. The head of the employment office denied that he had issued such an instruction.

An indication of the functioning of the authority results from its nickname "Schikanepromenade", derived from the address on Fontanepromenade . Jews were not allowed to look for work independently. Since they were not allowed to use public transport, they had to walk long distances to the central office . The rooms and corridors did not offer enough space for those waiting, so that many stayed outside the building and rested on park benches. When residents complained, two of the benches were painted yellow and labeled “Only for Jews”, while other benches were expressly reserved for “ Aryans ”.

The Central Office for Jews classified 25,000 women and 18,000 men between the ages of 18 and 60 as fit for work, recruited a large number of them by November 1940 and assigned many to the Berlin city administration for construction and demolition work. Later she assigned more Jewish forced laborers to Berlin industrial companies. For example, the Berlin Siemenswerke employed around 500 compulsory Jewish workers in April 1940 and more than 3,000 in autumn 1941. The compulsory employees were deployed there in partly separate workshops, partly with adjustable partitions.

In 1941, the agency cooperated with the Berlin Gestapo to coordinate the deportations of Jews in such a way that the factories with slave labor did not suffer from productivity. After the factory action in February / March 1943, she administered the surviving Jewish partners and descendants from so-called mixed marriages , insofar as they did not have to do forced labor abroad in Sonderkommando J.

Comparable positions

Barracks building in the 5th district

At the beginning of 1939, a control center for the Jewish unemployed was set up in Vienna's fifth district ( Margareten ) . It was located in Stolberggasse 42 , a former barracks building, and in 1940 it was moved to Hermanngasse 22 in the seventh district ( new building ). The establishment of this employment office for Jews was justified on the grounds that it was not reasonable for Aryans to be processed together with Jews.

At the behest of the Reich Security Main Office, some Jewish religious associations had to run their own departments for work.

Place of thought

stele

From 1950 to 2011 the partially destroyed building was used as a place of worship by the 'Community of Christ'. On May 23, 2013 a commemorative stele was unveiled on site at the initiative of a committed historian. In addition, a park bench was painted yellow, as in the 1940s, and placed at the site of the discrimination and disenfranchisement . However, this conspicuous marking was no longer available in the summer of 2015, and the corresponding information board has also been missing since then.

In 2016 the Shoah Foundation was able to sell the house to an investor from Bremen . This has begun to core the interior and to renovate the facade in accordance with monument protection, the building is to serve as a residential and office building after the renovation. Survivors of the Holocaust as Inge demand and a Berlin citizen initiative to preserve the site as a memorial and set up a documentation center. Deutschkron, who was obliged to do forced labor from here, sent letters to the district mayor and the newly elected Senator for Culture, Klaus Lederer , in which she called on the politicians to “work to ensure that this building is used in a way that does justice to its historical significance”. The Berlin House of Representatives decided to finance the memorial site on December 14, 2017. The owners have given their consent to the use of part of the building as a memorial in exchange for a rent that is customary in the area.

literature

  • David Koser et al .: Office for Jews of the Berlin Employment Office , In: Capital of the Holocaust. Places of National Socialist Racial Policy in Berlin stadtagentur.de , Berlin: Stadtagentur 2009, place 22, p. 141, ISBN 978-3-9813154-0-0 .
  • Wolf Gruner: The closed labor deployment of German Jews. On forced labor as an element of persecution 1938 to 1943. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-32-X (further).

Web links

Commons : Central Office for Jews  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrea Löw (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 , Volume 3: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939-September 1941 , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486- 58524-7 , p. 399 with note 12
  2. ↑ Dieter Maier: Labor administration and the National Socialist persecution of Jews in the years 1933–1939. In: Labor Market and Special Decree. Human exploitation, racial policy and the employment office (contributions to National Socialist health and social policy, Volume 8). Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-88022-957-0 , p. 105.
  3. ↑ VEJ 2/164 in: Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486 -58523-0 , p. 472.
  4. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 51 / Dieter Maier: Labor deployment and deportation. The involvement of the labor administration in the National Socialist persecution of the Jews in the years 1938-1945. ISBN 3-89468-127-6 , p. 40.
  5. ^ "... in Schmargendorf alone 800 Jews doing demolition work" = Dieter Maier: Labor administration and National Socialist persecution of Jews in the years 1933-1939 . In: Labor Market and Special Decree. Human exploitation, racial politics and the employment office. (Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy, Volume 8). Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-88022-957-0 , p. 109 / page no longer available , search in web archives: plan from 1926@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.alt-berlin.info
  6. ↑ Wolf Gruner: Public Welfare and the Persecution of Jews: Interactions between Local and Central Politics in the Nazi State (1933–1942) . Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56613-X , p. 204.
  7. ↑ VEJ 2/119 in: Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486 -58523-0 , p. 351.
  8. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 51.
  9. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 51.
  10. ↑ Germany reports of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sopade), Salzhausen 1980, fifth year 1938, p. 1330.
  11. ↑ Dieter Maier: Recycle and Destroy. Dieter Maier on labor administration and the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era , in: Labournet, as of February 26, 2005
  12. ↑ Andrea Löw (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 , Volume 3: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939-September 1941 , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486- 58524-7 , p. 399 with note 12.
  13. ↑ Wolf Gruner: The closed labor deployment of German Jews. On forced labor as an element of persecution from 1938 to 1943. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-32-X , p. 71/72 / In Hamburg, the Ferdinandstrasse 59 department was responsible - see VEJ 2/295 / Special department J at the Hamburg employment office, Sägerplatz according to Beate Meyer: "Jewish mixed race". Racial policy and experience of persecution 1933–1945 . 2nd Edition. Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-933374-22-7 , p. 58.
  14. ↑ Wolf Gruner: The closed labor deployment of German Jews. On forced labor as an element of persecution 1938 to 1943. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-32-X , p. 141.
  15. ↑ Document VEJ 3/83 In: Andrea Löw (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 3: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939-September 1941 , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58524-7 , pp. 236f.
  16. ^ Dieter Maier: Labor deployment and deportation. The involvement of the labor administration in the National Socialist persecution of the Jews in the years 1938-1945 . In: Wolfgang Scheffler, Gerhard Schoenberner (Hrsg.): Publications of the Memorial House of the Wannsee Conference . Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89468-127-6 , p. 109.
  17. ↑ Dieter Weigert: They all had a name. Exhibition “Jews in Berlin 1938–1945” . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 7, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 104-107 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  18. ↑ Place of Remembrance . aviva-berlin; Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  19. ↑ From the 'Schikanepromenade' to forced labor In: Der Freitag edition, September 12, 2003 (accessed on February 17, 2015)
  20. ^ Dieter Maier: Labor deployment and deportation. The involvement of the labor administration in the National Socialist persecution of the Jews in the years 1938-1945 . In: Wolfgang Scheffler, Gerhard Schoenberner (Hrsg.): Publications of the Memorial House of the Wannsee Conference . Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89468-127-6 , p. 16 f.
  21. ^ Andrea Löw (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945. Volume 3: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939-September 1941 . Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58524-7 , p. 399.
  22. ↑ Offices instead of memories ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Evening show of the RBB from December 26, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rbb-online.de
  23. ↑ Karin Schmidl: In search of a worthy memory . In: Berliner Zeitung , December 31, 2016, p. 13.
  24. ^ Open letter from Inge Deutschkron
  25. ↑ a b Fontanepromenade Memorial Site 15. In: wem-gehoert-kreuzberg.de. January 17, 2018, accessed February 10, 2018 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 30 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 27.6 ″  E